Ben Jones : The New Dark Age

Interdisciplinary artist Ben Jones of celebrated East Coast art collective Paper Rad presents a solo show of between-media video sculpture, light painting, and “drawing in the digital age” at Deitch Projects 76 Grand Street gallery. Entitled The New Dark Age, the exhibition explores new methods of pictoral storytelling through the drawn, projected, and sculpted line.

The exhibition consists of five components of equal importance to the artist: Ladders, Minimalism, Cartoon Drawings, Dogs, and Bricks. Buy a pizza and throw it into a dog park. Build a doghouse out of bricks. Draw cartoons to sell to street wear corporations and gorge yourself on soft pretzels. Then come to the exhibition.

Jones' menagerie of characters, honed through years of acclaimed comic and video making, appear in The New Dark Age in fresh suits of Neon Aztec Organic Spandex. His signature 2D Flash videos in this new exhibition open up into writhing 3D sacred glowing guts. The storefront room features Mush Robos and “Travel Berries.” Neon ladders scale gallery walls, as sculptured plexiglass beings and painted neon faces appear out of the blackness. One of the four “Ben Jones Approved Patters” covers the silk-screened entryway where the welcome video prepares you for “The New Dark Age.”

Ben Jones
The New Dark Age
76 Grand Street, New York